Page:The Cross Pull.pdf/264

 the rest; that Nash had lost the way, which accounted for his unexpected appearance on the ridge. They had guessed as much from his speech.

The things they now heard forced them to put a different, more sinister interpretation upon the few words he had spoken prior to Kinney’s shot. Brent had been bribed to go to the cabin for the purpose of killing Moran and bringing the girl to Nash. Nash was to take the horses and wait for Brent a few miles from the spot, leading a third horse for her. Several of the men laughed at his timidity; his sending another instead of doing the thing himself.

Moran reconstructed his ideas of the reason for Nash’s sudden appearance on the rims. The harrowing picture was plain to the last detail. Naturally they had avoided the bottoms on their way to the cabin but had held to the hills instead. Nash, a novice in the woods, had been confused by these unfamiliar trails and failed to make the appointed spot by dark. Already far from it he had blundered on in the wrong direction until at last some landmark which he knew informed him that he was nearer the spot from which he had started than the one where they were to meet. He had climbed the ridge to flash a signal of his